WotLK Talent Preview / Discussion - Page 122

Dimeron · 09/25/08, 12:52 PM

Originally Posted by dedmonwakeen

We have glyph support for all classes but Warlocks.... I'll work on that today.

Right now Warlock pets have infinite mana. All/Most of the infrastructure is there for pet sources of mana regen, but I couldn't find any info on the base regen level for warlock pets.....

I noticed that pets do not get warlock's hit rating, once I have tweaked the hit rating to 250, the warlock's miss chance decreased to 1.5% while the imp's hit chance remained at 14%.

The other thing I noticed is that the imp's crit rate seems to be stuck at 19.6%. Since raid wide crit boost is 18%, 19.6% seems to be a bit too low. I would imagine an imp would have at least 4 or 5% base crit chance.

This would probably make destruction warlock edge out enh shaman slightly.

Zed · 09/25/08, 12:53 PM

Originally Posted by Kobal

The big problem with 0/3/58 that I see in 3.0 is whether the Imp can actually survive in Sunwell. If not...

The big problems with the other builds in Sunwell are...

For Affliction, you have to give up either Haunt or Ruin (at a level of 40-50% raidbuffed crit), severe blows.

For Demo, same thing, except you can pass on Meta for Ruin (Meta is a ~3.5% increase in personal dps). In Sunwell, Demonic Pact is ~50 spellpower over Totem of Wrath for everybody so that build might have some breathing room, depending on how the Felguard survivability/damage relates to the Imp.

Destro would lose Aegis only that is <50 spellpower at 70 and seems to be the least afflicted by the -10 talent points. Assuming the developer goal is that the 3 specs have similar damage numbers, and the imp can survive/regen through the encounters, Destro should come out on top at 70. Also, it will be nice to have a Destro with Nether Prot for tanking, in case you don't like respeccing much.

Scrufola · 09/25/08, 2:26 PM

Some very nice person reported my post and got me an infraction. Let me try to make my point more clear:

mmo-champion.com - Bluetracker

Death knights now do double damage on melee and spell crits. Normally spell crits are only 1.5x damage.

This was an intended change. Death knights derive a lot of damage from spells, but not so much that it made sense to give them a talent to increase spell critical damage. It's just a passive bonus for them.

We were worried about certain specs not scaling as well with high levels of gear.

I found that rather interesting for warlocks because Blizzard states, that every DK spec needs to scale with crit. Otherwise some specs will fall behind in high level gear.

This is exactly the problem affliction has in TBC but there Blizzard thinks that affliction does not need more crit scaling besides Shadowbolt.

If they would put a 100% spell crit bonus talent in one of the three trees, the other two would have to spec into that one. That's like 2 trees depending on the third for doing damage. This is exactly the case with warlocks. No matter what you spec, you will use destruction filler spells.

dedmonwakeen · 09/25/08, 2:38 PM

Originally Posted by Betel

I was testing different destruction rotations when I ran into a problem.

Currently the backdraft conditional is available only for shadow bolt, but not for immolate or incinerate. This creates a problem: it is impossible to model a conflag 3xincinerate immo rotation, which might end up being good since there are other warlocks keeping immo up. If I have time I'll try to add the conditional and recompile so I can finish the tests.

Okay, I'll add the backdraft conditional to Incinerate. It is worth noting that unlike other conditional procs, this one does not trigger a response-time check since you know when it is going to happen.

On the subject of Backdraft: Despite the tooltip saying "cast time reduction" I model it as a "cast speed increase" like all the other haste effects: execute_time *= 1.0 / ( 1.0 + talents.backdraft * 0.10 )

Is this correct? Or is truly a flat 70% modifier "pre-haste" ala the Druid's Natures Grace?

Originally Posted by Dimeron

I noticed that pets do not get warlock's hit rating, once I have tweaked the hit rating to 250, the warlock's miss chance decreased to 1.5% while the imp's hit chance remained at 14%.

The other thing I noticed is that the imp's crit rate seems to be stuck at 19.6%. Since raid wide crit boost is 18%, 19.6% seems to be a bit too low. I would imagine an imp would have at least 4 or 5% base crit chance.

This would probably make destruction warlock edge out enh shaman slightly.

I was totally unaware that pets inherited Hit Rating. Is this just Warlock pets or all pets?

Thanks for the Imp crit rating catch..... The Imps -are- coded up with a base 5% crit chance, but it appears to be pulling the composite_spell_crit() function off of player_t instead of pet_t....... I'll look into it.

Dimeron · 09/25/08, 2:56 PM

I think it is suppose to be for all pets, but for now I only know that hunter and warlock's pet hit rating = master hit rating.

The other question I have is for all the talent multiplier, is it multiplicative, or additive. ie. 10% increase + 10% increase, is it 1.1 * 1.1, or 1 + 0.1 + 0.1.

Thanks.

Fireye · 09/25/08, 3:03 PM

Originally Posted by dedmonwakeen

I was totally unaware that pets inherited Hit Rating. Is this just Warlock pets or all pets?

Warlock pets and hunter pets are supposedly going to (or currently are) inherit(ing) the master's hit rating. I don't think I've seen any numbers on it though, so it probably isn't implemented yet.

Trickykid · 09/25/08, 3:05 PM

Added in 4pt6, improved immolate and FnB. I'm leery of adding LT in yet unless someone knows a good estimate on raid-wide mana regen and estimated raiding Base Mana.
Rotations:
A: Conflag before last tick of immolate. Immolate, Incin x2 during backdraft.
B: Conflag before last tick of immolate. Incinerate x3 during backdraft, immolate after.
C: No conflag, just immolate, incinerate xN.
The below DPS is after ~2 mins of DPSing when the lines become close to linear.
Also keep in mind this is intended to help figure out which spells to use and in which order, not actual DPS.

SP     | Crit  | Haste | A       | B       | C     |
-------+-------+-------+---------+---------+-------+
2000   | 20%   | 10%   | 2,085   | 1,997   | 1,969 |
2000   | 20%   | 30%   | 2,452   | 2,360   | 2,327 |
2000   | 20%   | 50%   | 2,801   | 2,723   | 2,685 |
2000   | 35%   | 10%   | 2,329   | 2,232   | 2,199 |
2000   | 35%   | 30%   | 2,739   | 2,638   | 2,599 |
2000   | 35%   | 50%   | 3,128   | 3,044   | 2,998 |
2000   | 50%   | 10%   | 2,573   | 2,467   | 2,428 |
2000   | 50%   | 30%   | 3,025   | 2,916   | 2,870 |
2000   | 50%   | 50%   | 3,455   | 3,365   | 3,312 |
3000   | 20%   | 10%   | 2,773   | 2,669   | 2,631 |
3000   | 20%   | 30%   | 3,260   | 3,154   | 3,110 |
3000   | 20%   | 50%   | 3,724   | 3,639   | 3,588 |
3000   | 35%   | 10%   | 3,097   | 2,984   | 2,939 |
3000   | 35%   | 30%   | 3,642   | 3,526   | 3,473 |
3000   | 35%   | 50%   | 4,160   | 4,068   | 4,007 |
3000   | 50%   | 10%   | 3,421   | 3,299   | 3,246 |
3000   | 50%   | 30%   | 4,023   | 3,898   | 3,836 |
3000   | 50%   | 50%   | 4,595   | 4,498   | 4,426 |
4000   | 20%   | 10%   | 3,460   | 3,340   | 3,293 |
4000   | 20%   | 30%   | 4,068   | 3,948   | 3,892 |
4000   | 20%   | 50%   | 4,647   | 4,555   | 4,491 |
4000   | 35%   | 10%   | 3,865   | 3,735   | 3,678 |
4000   | 35%   | 30%   | 4,545   | 4,414   | 4,347 |
4000   | 35%   | 50%   | 5,191   | 5,093   | 5,016 |
4000   | 50%   | 10%   | 4,270   | 4,130   | 4,063 |
4000   | 50%   | 30%   | 5,021   | 4,881   | 4,802 |
4000   | 50%   | 50%   | 5,736   | 5,631   | 5,541 |

Looks as though the first cycle is actually better scaling than the others.

Profanity · 09/25/08, 3:29 PM

Originally Posted by Kobal

The big problem with 0/3/58 that I see in 3.0 is whether the Imp can actually survive in Sunwell. If not...

Through my testing on the PTR in pug raids of BT and TK, I found that the imp could not survive. The only fight in SWP that I can see the imp surviving is Brutallus, by placing him near the burn area to avoid Meteor Slashes.

As it is though, I foresee us sticking to demonic sacrifice for the remainder of TBC unless we are given some kind of upgrade for the imps survival.

On the subject of imp survival, I would like to see the empowered imp talent get a change to include additional avoidance for the imp.

1/3 : additional 33%
2/3 : additional 66%
3/3 : additional 100%

Akj · 09/25/08, 3:40 PM

Originally Posted by Profanity

Through my testing on the PTR in pug raids of BT and TK, I found that the imp could not survive. The only fight in SWP that I can see the imp surviving is Brutallus, by placing him near the burn area to avoid Meteor Slashes.

As it is though, I foresee us sticking to demonic sacrifice for the remainder of TBC unless we are given some kind of upgrade for the imps survival.

On the subject of imp survival, I would like to see the empowered imp talent get a change to include additional avoidance for the imp.

1/3 : additional 33%
2/3 : additional 66%
3/3 : additional 100%

Pets are immune to burn & meteor slash as far as I know. I do agree that on some Sunwell fights (Felmyst) we may have to sac our pets regardless of the changes.

Betel · 09/25/08, 3:45 PM

Originally Posted by dedmonwakeen

Is this correct? Or is truly a flat 70% modifier "pre-haste" ala the Druid's Natures Grace?

Unfortunately it is not correct... At least according to all my tests Backdraft is a flat 70% pre-haste modifier that can not reduce global cooldown. This is important because it significantly skews the difference between casting shadow bolt/incinerate/chaos bolt and immolate during backdraft (basically immolate is a complete waste of a charge).

Damn. I had done a lot of simulations in the meanwhile but if this bug is in, I just need to redo everything. At least I have a set of action lists saved.

Soulzar · 09/25/08, 3:49 PM

Originally Posted by Profanity

Through my testing on the PTR in pug raids of BT and TK, I found that the imp could not survive. The only fight in SWP that I can see the imp surviving is Brutallus, by placing him near the burn area to avoid Meteor Slashes.

As it is though, I foresee us sticking to demonic sacrifice for the remainder of TBC unless we are given some kind of upgrade for the imps survival.

I was not able to find the blue post, but I have read one that stated if pet survivability is still not high enough after the avoidance changes that they would tweak them as needed to keep them viable.

Originally Posted by Betel

Unfortunately it is not correct... At least according to all my tests Backdraft is a flat 70% pre-haste modifier that can not reduce global cooldown. This is important because it significantly skews the difference between casting shadow bolt/incinerate/chaos bolt and immolate during backdraft (basically immolate is a complete waste of a charge).

With all my PTR cast rotation testing I was casting Backdraft Immolates that were at .88 seconds that did not seem to ping the global cooldown at all.

Profanity · 09/25/08, 3:53 PM

Originally Posted by Soulzar

I was not able to find the blue post, but I have read one that stated if pet survivability is still not high enough after the avoidance changes that they would tweak them as needed to keep them viable.

I am hoping that some additional changes are made to improve pet survivability. I don't doubt that later WOTLK raids will "feature" the same kind of AOE/Raid damage that is so abundant in Sunwell Plateau.

dedmonwakeen · 09/25/08, 3:54 PM

Originally Posted by Betel

Unfortunately it is not correct... At least according to all my tests Backdraft is a flat 70% pre-haste modifier that can not reduce global cooldown. This is important because it significantly skews the difference between casting shadow bolt/incinerate/chaos bolt and immolate during backdraft (basically immolate is a complete waste of a charge).

Damn. I had done a lot of simulations in the meanwhile but if this bug is in, I just need to redo everything. At least I have a set of action lists saved.

I think your sims are still reasonably good.... I knew it did not affect the GCD..... I just didn't know how it affected the cast time.

So.... you wil still get bit by the GCD..... but you won't see the best possible cast time reduction.

Montegomery · 09/25/08, 4:17 PM

Originally Posted by Soulzar

With all my PTR cast rotation testing I was casting Backdraft Immolates that were at .88 seconds that did not seem to ping the global cooldown at all.

I wish I could concur, but in all my PTR tests Backdraft + Immolate has pinged the GCD. I have no haste gear so my Immolate cast time is 1.05 seconds versus a 1.5 second GCD, making it quite obvious that I'm spending a good half second waiting on the GCD. It's pretty difficult to notice if I'm not paying attention.

Again, I wish you were right, but for your .88 second Immolates to avoid pinging the GCD they would not only have to violate the mechanics of Backdraft as we know them, but also the hard 1 second GCD cap.

This is why I'm a firm proponent of a Wrath/Nature's Grace type solution for Backdraft. Even though Immolate wouldn't scale very much with Haste, allowing it specifically to benefit from the full effect of Backdraft would be ideal.

Dimeron · 09/25/08, 4:59 PM

Originally Posted by Darian_TruBlade

I wish I could concur, but in all my PTR tests Backdraft + Immolate has pinged the GCD. I have no haste gear so my Immolate cast time is 1.05 seconds versus a 1.5 second GCD, making it quite obvious that I'm spending a good half second waiting on the GCD. It's pretty difficult to notice if I'm not paying attention.

Again, I wish you were right, but for your .88 second Immolates to avoid pinging the GCD they would not only have to violate the mechanics of Backdraft as we know them, but also the hard 1 second GCD cap.

This is why I'm a firm proponent of a Wrath/Nature's Grace type solution for Backdraft. Even though Immolate wouldn't scale very much with Haste, allowing it specifically to benefit from the full effect of Backdraft would be ideal.

I think the best solution would just simply make conflag refresh (or not consume) immolate. Either through a talent or glyph.

That would resolve this whole annoying issue of backdraft, immolate, and incinerate.

Originally Posted by Profanity

Through my testing on the PTR in pug raids of BT and TK, I found that the imp could not survive. The only fight in SWP that I can see the imp surviving is Brutallus, by placing him near the burn area to avoid Meteor Slashes.

As it is though, I foresee us sticking to demonic sacrifice for the remainder of TBC unless we are given some kind of upgrade for the imps survival.

On the subject of imp survival, I would like to see the empowered imp talent get a change to include additional avoidance for the imp.

1/3 : additional 33%
2/3 : additional 66%
3/3 : additional 100%

I would like to see as a glyph, or a low tier demonology tree talent, that way other spec besides destruction can access it as well.

Heck, just make pet immune to aoe damage and be done with it.

Trickykid · 09/25/08, 5:02 PM

So it's confirmed that backdrafted spells = 0.7*base/(1+haste) and backdrafted GCD stays at Max(1,1.5/(1+haste))? I want to update my sheet with proper values, it'll probably swing the incinerates during backdraft upward relatively.

Sephirah · 09/25/08, 5:07 PM

Originally Posted by dedmonwakeen

SimulationCraft has been updated for patch 8982. The list of classes now supported includes: Druid, Mage, Priest, Shaman, Warlock.

It's possible to cast Drain Soul when target health is <= 20?
It should do quadruple damage on mobs with low health, and with 2/2 Soul Siphon it ticks for a lot!

dedmonwakeen · 09/25/08, 5:32 PM

Originally Posted by Sephirah

It's possible to cast Drain Soul when target health is <= 20?
It should do quadruple damage on mobs with low health, and with 2/2 Soul Siphon it ticks for a lot!

Where is the info on quadruple damage? Is this a "blue promise" or has it been implemented?

• Nicarras · 09/25/08, 5:39 PM

Originally Posted by Dimeron

I think the best solution would just simply make conflag refresh (or not consume) immolate. Either through a talent or glyph.

This is a great idea, and makes too much sense!

We can see that they dont want us to be SB spammers anymore in PvE. But they need to rework how fire is currently working or else we'll just keep going back to SB.

Sephirah · 09/25/08, 5:51 PM

Originally Posted by dedmonwakeen

Where is the info on quadruple damage? Is this a "blue promise" or has it been implemented?

It was a blue promise and it's not written in the tooltip, but my Drain Soul ticked for 4k on the mobs in the Blasted Lands (1 health and immortal), so I assumed it's implemented. Anybody can confirm this?

Fulgurite · 09/25/08, 6:02 PM

Originally Posted by Trickykid

Looks as though the first cycle is actually better scaling than the others.

I don't know about that. Your results all seem to go up relatively the same. A is ahead in almost all cases, then a gap and B, with C close behind B. However, the difference is 100 DPS from high to low for most brackets, and 200 at most at the high end.

If the relative spacing of the specs doesn't change, I interpret that as they all scale about the same.

And honestly, if Immo/Incin x infinity is within 100 DPS of a full blown Backdraft/Conflag rotation, why bother with Backdraft? You get more talent points to spend elsewhere (Imp. Lifetap comes to mind, that would increase your DPS), and you don't spend as much mana / second and have a much better DPM rotation. Which reduces lifetaps and increases DPS.

Getting better DPM out of Immo (don't clip the last tick) and not spending ANY on conflag, while Incinerating more often (it's the best DPM we have), AND being able to spec into Imp. Lifetap (or perhaps just more utility, like nether prot and shadowfury, or pushback reduction)? Yes please!

Mugandra · 09/25/08, 6:18 PM

Quadruple Damage on Drain Soul:

After a lot of experiments on the PTR (shard farming as a Destruction Warlock sucks all kinds of objects through a lot of garden hoses) the damage really is 4 times the normal amount (for me, 776/777 ticks go up to 3106). There is a catch though - you have to start channeling the spell when the mob is already below 20% health otherwise it keeps on ticking with the normal amount. So the effect is not "smart" and has to be timed right.

SimulationCraft and Destruction Rotations:

Does you current Backdraft simulation account for the last Incinerate right before Conflagrate not benefitting from the Immolate bonus? If you chaincast (as you should), the last Incinerate is mid-flight when you hit your Conflagrate button and when it hits there is no Immolate on the target. With raid stacking gone and untalented Immolate not being really good for Demonology and Affliction I would prefer if the simulation would not be so optimistic as to assume a 100% Immolate uptime.

Atrocity3 · 09/25/08, 6:50 PM

Ok so I did a little work on the PTR with Destro and this is what I came up with:

Used this spec:http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000

Stats : 1400 Damage 22% crit 50 haste

Rotation 1

Immolate > Chaos Bolt > Inc x6 > Conflag repeat

Dps : 1314/1453/1512 on three tries

Rotation 2

Immolate > Chaos Bolt > Inc x7 repeat

Dps : 1642/1689/1764 on three tries.

Im pretty sure this is the spec I will be using when the patch comes out for raiding. I will be using the second rotation witht the imp out of course.

EDIT: Possible change, take out points in improved immolate conflag and backdraft and put them in afflic for imp lifetap

Trickykid · 09/25/08, 6:50 PM

Originally Posted by Fulgurite

I don't know about that. Your results all seem to go up relatively the same. A is ahead in almost all cases, then a gap and B, with C close behind B. However, the difference is 100 DPS from high to low for most brackets, and 200 at most at the high end.

If the relative spacing of the specs doesn't change, I interpret that as they all scale about the same.

And honestly, if Immo/Incin x infinity is within 100 DPS of a full blown Backdraft/Conflag rotation, why bother with Backdraft? You get more talent points to spend elsewhere (Imp. Lifetap comes to mind, that would increase your DPS), and you don't spend as much mana / second and have a much better DPM rotation. Which reduces lifetaps and increases DPS.

Getting better DPM out of Immo (don't clip the last tick) and not spending ANY on conflag, while Incinerating more often (it's the best DPM we have), AND being able to spec into Imp. Lifetap (or perhaps just more utility, like nether prot and shadowfury, or pushback reduction)? Yes please!

Yeah I was just commenting that at those high levels, it does go a BIT higher than at low levels of gear. Your point about dropping entirely for other talents is pretty valid though... Particularly since it's looking like (reiterating caveat that this is with current numbers) Corruption is worth casting even without Improved Corruption talents, so those 5 points bump that damage up and allows for efficient life tapping.

I feel like I have the mana consumption numbers wrong. 14% base mana for incinerate even with our current mana levels is over 1500 mana per cast. Even if life tap is giving 3k mana that's a life tap every 2 nukes. Ouch? Hopefully I'm missing something major there!

Profanity · 09/25/08, 6:55 PM

Originally Posted by Dimeron

I think the best solution would just simply make conflag refresh (or not consume) immolate. Either through a talent or glyph.

That would resolve this whole annoying issue of backdraft, immolate, and incinerate.

Rework Fire and Brimstone to have similar workings as Everlasting Affliction, except apply to Conflag.

1/5 :20% chance to refresh immolate upon cast of conflag
2/5: 40% chance to refresh immolate upon cast of conflag
3/5 :60% chance to refresh immolate upon cast of conflag
4/5: 80% chance to refresh immolate upon cast of conflag
5/5: 100% chance to refresh immolate upon cast of conflag

This would solve many problems.